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Ralph Jennings

During his state visit to Beijing in January, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that China had agreed to grant citizens of the United Kingdom visa-free entry for trips lasting up to 30 days.
Only days before, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney revealed that China had committed to exploring a similar deal for his country’s nationals.
Over the past two years, Beijing has been steadily lowering visa requirements for inbound travellers – or removing them outright – to stimulate China’s tourism sector.
The National Immigration Administration said on Wednesday that more than 30 million foreign nationals entered China without a visa last year, a year-on-year increase of nearly 50 per cent.
Immigration officials now allow travellers from dozens of countries to stay without a visa for up to 10 days on a transit basis, while a growing list of other foreign nationals are permitted to remain for 30 days without a visa.
Obtaining a visa to enter mainland China often requires filling out pages of paperwork, paying more than US$100 and waiting days for the documents to be processed.
Here are five ways for travellers to avoid that lengthy process and enter mainland China without a visa.
Transit through Chinese cities (10 days or 24 hours)
Passport holders from 55 nations – including Australia, Russia, Indonesia, the United States and several European countries – can stay for up to 10 days in much of mainland China by transiting through one of its international airports.
Travellers can enter China via 60 ports of entry across 24 provincial-level regions under the scheme, including airports in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guilin, Kunming, Qingdao, Shenyang, Tianjin, Wuhan, Xiamen, Guangdong province and the Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang cluster.


A full list of countries covered by the transit scheme and the ports of entry that can process visa-free entries is available here.
A transit stay of up to 24 hours, meanwhile, is available to visitors from any country arriving at any international airport.
Travellers must stay within the designated city or surrounding provinces during the 10-day or 24-hour period. They are not allowed to visit other parts of mainland China on the same trip, but they may enter from or depart to Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan.
There is no charge and no application to fill out before travelling. A unique entry card may be required on arrival if cards are available at the transit desk at the airport or seaport.
Passengers must prove to the airline before boarding, and again to immigration authorities after arriving, that they have a ticket to leave the city or province – usually by air, though possibly by ferry – to a place outside mainland China where they did not begin their journey.
For example, a passenger may reach Shanghai visa-free from Singapore, and then proceed to Seoul – or fly from the special administrative region of Macau to Xiamen and onwards to Taipei.
Proof of a hotel booking in China sometimes expedites the immigration process.
The departure time of the outbound ticket must fall within the transit window, which starts at midnight on the first full calendar day after arrival.
Round-trip tickets are not allowed, as they do not qualify as “transit”. For example, a visitor would not be able to fly from London to Shanghai and then return directly to London under the transit scheme.
Transit-visa waivers began more than a decade ago to stimulate tourism spending and attendance at events such as trade shows, but there are no special limits on what travellers can do in China.


Stay in Hainan province (30 days)
The tropical island province of Hainan, which lies southwest of Hong Kong, has a special policy allowing nationals from 59 countries to enter visa-free. A list of those countries is here.
Visitors are required only to book a round-trip flight to one of the province’s two main international airports, in Sanya or Haikou, and may be asked to fill out an arrival form on the plane.
Seaports with immigration kiosks can also process visa-free arrivals.
Hainan, long popular with domestic tourists during the cold season, began allowing visa-free travel in 2018 to stimulate tourism.
Travellers under this scheme are not allowed to visit other parts of China during the 30-day window unless they have an unexpired visa for the whole country.
Book a group tour from Hong Kong or Macau to Guangdong province (six days)
Citizens of any country that has diplomatic ties with China may legally join tour groups arranged by agencies registered in Hong Kong or Macau to enter specific cities in neighbouring Guangdong province.
Groups may enter Guangdong by land, sea or air and stay for 144 hours, with dozens of bus, rail and ferry routes connecting the province with Hong Kong.
To qualify for the programme, now in its 26th year, a tour group must have at least two people and no more than 40. The group should enter and exit at the same time, as arranged by the agency.


The nine Pearl River Delta cities of Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Zhaoqing, Zhongshan and Zhuhai are approved destinations.
Shantou, a coastal city located east of the delta, also falls under the scheme.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board’s website said the scheme is “subject to change without prior notice”, and suggested contacting a tour operator for updated information.
A National Immigration Administration media representative in Beijing has suggested that travellers call the immigration hotline at +86 12367 with any related questions. The phone service is available to travellers both inside and outside mainland China. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with staff members who speak Mandarin and English.
Separately, citizens of the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations may form tour groups of at least two people for visa-free visits of up to six days to two specific areas: Guilin in China’s southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region or Xishuangbanna in Yunnan province.
Arrive by cruise ship (15 days)
Foreign visitors may spend 15 days in China without a visa if they arrive on international cruises and are received by an onshore travel agency.
The rules grant entry to tour groups of at least two people via the cruise ports in Beihai, Dalian, Guangzhou, Haikou, Lianyungang, Qingdao, Sanya, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wenzhou, Xiamen and Zhoushan.
Tourists disembarking from ships may stay in Beijing, as well as in China’s 11 coastal provinces, regions and municipalities.




These rules extend a 10-year-old pilot scheme that allowed passengers to alight visa-free only in Shanghai. The Shanghai rule lets tourists enter the eastern city via the Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal and stay for 15 days.
Travel agencies taking passengers to Shanghai must be registered in mainland China, and the entire tour group must enter and exit at the same time.
Have a passport from one of 76 countries (30 days)
Passport holders from 48 countries – including most of Europe, plus growing swathes of the Middle East and Latin America – may enter China visa-free for 30 days. Sweden was the most recent country allowed into the scheme, and British and Canadian nationals are expected to join once their agreements are formalised.
Details, including names of eligible countries, appear here.
China calls these visa-free offers unilateral, meaning the other countries do not necessarily offer Chinese nationals the same treatment. The primary goal is to stoke the Chinese service economy through tourism.
People from countries on the list may travel visa-free for business, tourism, family visits or transit.
France, Germany and Malaysia were among the first to join when the scheme began rolling out in late 2023.
These schemes are set to expire on December 31, after a blanket extension to the policy was granted in early January.
China has mutual visa-free agreements for ordinary passport holders from a separate list of 29 countries, meaning Chinese nationals can visit the other side, and vice versa, usually for 30 days.


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With more countries joining the visa exemption list and more points of entry for other passport holders, travel to China has never been easier


With more countries joining the visa exemption list and more points of entry for other passport holders, travel to China has never been easier.


Here are 5 ways to enter China without a visa – by land, sea or air

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}With more countries joining the visa exemption list and more points of entry for other passport holders, travel to China has never been easier

With more countries joining the visa exemption list and more points of entry for other passport holders, travel to China has never been easier